Man Guilty Again In BK Murder After Case Tossed Over Disgraced Cop: DA

NEW YORK CITY — A Brooklyn man who had a decades-old murder conviction tossed because of a disgraced NYPD detective's connection to the investigation was found guilty a second time for the slaying, prosecutors said.

Eliseo Deleon, 45, killed a man during a 1995 botched robbery in Bed-Stuy, a judge found this week after a non-jury trial, said Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.

The same judge — Dena Douglas — had reversed Deleon's decades-old conviction in 2019 based on the involvement of retired Det. Louis Scarcella, a once-lauded NYPD investigator who now stands accused of inducing false confessions and other wrongdoing in nearly 20 cases. Douglas, however, found other evidence supported finding Deleon guilty of murder, said Gonzalez.

“The guilty verdict handed down by a judge today, which correctly focused on the eyewitness identifications, validates the approach my Office has taken when reexamining cases involving Det. Scarcella: we ask to vacate when we find misconduct or violations of due process rights and stand by convictions when the evidence supports findings of guilt," Gonzalez said in a statement.

"In this case, compelling eyewitness accounts provided proof beyond reasonable doubt of the defendant’s guilt at both the original trial and again today.”

Deleon's conviction stems from a June 4, 1995, killing along Franklin Avenue, when Fausto Cordero and his family walked back to their car from a party, prosecutors said.

A gunman demanded money, but fatally shot Cordero in the chest as Cordero pushed his wife out of the way, authorities said.

Cordero's wife identified Deleon as the shooter, prosecutors said. Another woman who witnessed the botched robbery from a nearby couldn't positively identify Deleon at the retrial after nearly two decades, but her past in-court and photo array identifications were admitted as evidence, authorities said.

Scarcella and his partner, retired Det. Stephen Chmil, didn't testify at the original trial, but were called as witnesses by the defense in the retrial, prosecutors said.

Defense attorneys argued that Scarcella was present during Deleon's interrogation, which led to a confession of a few brief sentences, the Associated Press reported.

“Everything in this case has been tainted” by Scarcella and Chmil, a defense attorney said in the retrial's summation last month, according to the Associated Press.

Deleon faces a prison term of 25 years to life during a scheduled Sept. 14 sentencing hearing.